CAFOD's LiveSimply Award

CAFOD tell us here about the LiveSimply scheme - Inspired by the Pope's encyclical.

Want to put your faith into action? We've got just the thing for you. Our parish LiveSimply
award enables you to strengthen the bonds of community, nourish your
spiritual life and care for God's gift of creation.

To win the award, a parish must display nine ways in which it is putting into practice the three principles of
livesimply:
living in solidarity with people in poverty; living simply; and living
sustainably with creation. Receipt of the award is national recognition
to Catholic parishes that they are making a difference to their
community – and the world

St Mary's Parish Live Simply Project

We have set up a small group to look at how we can best respond to Pope Francis' invitation to live simply so that others may simply live. This group has meet a few times and helped us to begin exploring these important issues and looking how we as a parish and as individuals are and can respond to this challenge today.

Following this we have now drawn up our Parish Live Simply Action Plan which was approved by our Parish Pastoral Council at our Annual General Meeting in September and by our Parish Finance Committee. This has now been sent to CAFOD and they will send us a certificate to let everyone know we are have started. Click here for a copy of our action plan St Mary's Parish Live Simply Action Plan

One of our main actions is to share our own live simply challenges. In both churches, you will find our live simply pledge boards, simply fill in one of the postit notes and place it on the board sharing how you will try and live more simply this coming year – there is no need to say who you are or to give any contact details unless you wish to

Look out for more live simply ideas and things we can do together as a parish family in the coming weeks and months

How about joining freecycle - a great way of handing on those unwanted items and finding things you need for free visit the Ipswich page FreeCycle

For Christmas 2016 we did not have the usual Christmas Trees in our churches as we made a donation of £126 (the cost the Christmas trees for St Mary's and Holy Family & St Michael's) to the Woodland trust who will be able to plant 42 trees in the coming year - for more information please visit Woodland Trust

In the Autumn of 2017 we had our first Parish Walk, ending with afternoon tea. This was an enjoyable afternoon and we look forward to the next walk in the Spring of 2018. Again we will have a country walk ending with afternoon tea.

Live Simply Wildflower Gardens - as part of our Live Simply parish commitment we are being invited to plant a wildflower patch in our gardens. The Parish has supplied some seeds. Your wildflower patch could be as small or as large as you like, but nothing too onerous - from a metre square to ... well you decide. Parish LiveSimply Wildflower Patches

Look out for more live simply ideas and things we can do together as a parish family in the coming weeks and months

How about joining freecycle - a great way of handing on those unwanted items and finding things you need for free visit the Ipswich page FreeCycle